Secret World: Legends has a vivid and diverse roleplaying community. A community of players who play roleplay as their characters in the game, expand on the story to tell their own tales and bring the world alive by interacting with each other.

In this post I try to give you a few pointers if you want to join in, and have collected some resources that can help you improve your roleplay experience in SWL!

If you know other resources that are helpful for RPers, please post them. I will add them.

What is Roleplay & Basics

Roleplaying means taking a role and playing it for a while. If you played cops and robbers as kids, that was basic roleplay. Some took the role of cops, some that of the robbers. In the context of the game, it means players taking the roles of their characters and playing as them, acting as if they are really living in the secret world.

IC, OOC & the Brackets

In Character or IC is everything the character does or says. Out of Character or OOC is what the player does and says. It is important to remember that those two are not the same. Some players enjoy roleplaying as more antagonistic characters.

While those characters are interesting and can add very much to an immersive world, keep in mind that playing a malicious character is not an excuse for you as player to be mean or harass other players! If you are unsure whether the other player is offended, talk to them OOC about the situation and clear things up. Make sure your partners are comfortable with the RP and if something makes you uncomfortable, bring it up to them as well.

To differentiate between IC and OOC within the same chat, usually double brackets are used to mark OOC communication. This can be (( )) or [[ ]] or {{ }}. Other’s use OOC: to mark it.

Group or raid chat is usually considered OOC but it might vary. As always, if in doubt, ask the players you are playing with.

What Characters can I play?

The most common kind of character you will find is the “bee”: people roleplaying as characters as they are presented in the main story of the game. A person who swallowed a bee (hence the name) and became somewhat immortal, able to use magic and got recruited into one of the secret society factions.

Some people prefer to roleplay as different kinds of characters though. What about them?

Everything is true

Was one of the taglines of The Secret World, so in general, you pretty much can roleplay as whatever you like. But, you might have guessed, there is a but. Most players will assume your character is a bee unless you communicate otherwise. If you play something special, it is up to you to make sure that it fits into the universe of the game and to inform your fellow players, either OOCly or through IC roleplay.

Some popular concepts are: Normal (mortal) humans, demonic corrupted, Half-Fae, Jinns, Vampires and members of different factions (Orochi, Phoenicians, etc.). Many of these exist in SWL and you will meet them during your playthrough of the story. That does not mean you can not roleplay as a “different kind of X” but you should try to find out what the game presents. A good source for that is the crygaia wiki.

Of course players interpret the lore of the game differently, and make different assumptions on how things work in the world. There is no one way of “roleplaying correctly”. So keep an open mind if you approach others with your custom character concept or interacting with theirs and communicate with them.

In-game RP

While there are some other options on where to roleplay in the world of SWL, the most common is to play in the actual game.

How to emote

Let’s start with the basics. How do you emote, or in other words make your character do stuff.

Animations

There are a number of emotes integrated into the game and they come with nice animations. To make your character run those, you can open your character sheet and then choose the emote button or the shortcut O (letter o, not a zero).

This will open the emote box as shown in the screenshot. Clicking ‘Play’ will run the animation. Some run once then end, while others loop. ‘Drink’ for example makes your character drink something once, while dances or sit emotes keep going until you move or do something else.

Another way to play those emotes is the chat window. The command can be looked up in the emoted box.

/sit for example makes your character sit. You can use autocomplete by typing the first few letters of a command, then press the TAB key. See an example for /da followed by a press of TAB below.

And yes, you can press TAB just after typing the slash / to see all chat window commands.

Free text

As nice as these animations are, they are not really interactive with other players and are quite limited. That’s why most of the time text is used to describe a character’s action. Of course the game will not render the action and will not enforce anything. You and the other players have to use imagination.

To write a free text emote you can use /me or /emote followed by your text. The message will be shown in the say channel. See a few examples below.

Quotation Marks, tense & other style questions

Should you use quotation marks around speech even when no emote is present? What tense should you emote in? What point of view? There is no right or wrong as long as you make sure your partners understand what is going on. Everything else is just a matter preference and differs from person to person.

Etiquette: It usually is frowned upon to force your character’s actions on another character without giving them a chance to react. Marc grabs Sam’s hand and shakes it firmly. assumes Sam is not pulling his hand back or otherwise avoiding the contact. Marc reaches out for Sam’s hand in order to shake it firmly describes the intention and Sam’s player can decide the outcome and Sam’s reaction.

How to find RP in-game

So, how to find other players to RP with?

Walking around

The most basic way to find roleplay is walking around in-game and trying to find other roleplayers. There are a few places where you are more likely to find roleplayers, mostly the hub cities and the bar in Agartha.

SWL does not have dedicated RP servers, so you can not assume that everyone you run into is also roleplaying. The population is split into several instances of each region, which makes it even less likely to just run into other roleplayers. There can be situations where three roleplayers sit in the Horned God (Pub in London, a popular RP spot) but don’t see each other because they are in different instances.

Meeting up

If you want to meet someone for roleplay and know their nickname, you can use the “Meet up” feature to get to the same instance as them. You can right click the other player’s nickname in the chat window and choose “Meet up” or do the same from the friend list. The Add-on RPList can help you finding other roleplayers to meet up on (see below)

SWLRP chat channel

One place to find ongoing RP and other roleplayers is the #SWLRP custom chat channel.

/chat join swlrp

Is the command to join it in the English client. If you are using the French or German client, the command differs. /chat beitreten swlrp for German and /discussion rejoindre swlrp for French.

How to make it permanent

You don’t automatically join the channel on login unless you create an auto_login file in your SWL/Scripts folder and add the command to it.

Events

Another way to find fellow roleplayers is to visit RP events. They are created by other players and can be found on the calendars of the community sites mentioned below. One particular kind of events are the regular radio shows / parties. They are great opportunities for networking and getting to know other characters / players.

RP Add-ons

There are a few Add-ons that can improve your RP experience in SWL.

SWLRP Profile Addon

This Addon allows you to create RP profiles and read those of fellow roleplayers. Below is a screenshot of my profile so you can see how they look like. If a player has a profile, they most likely are roleplayers

BooBuilds

BooBuilds is not really a RP mod as it mostly gives you the opportunity to save skill & gear builds. But it also allows you to save your outfits, something that can be quite useful for roleplayers.

Radio Shows / Stations

As mentioned above, a good way to meet other characters in a casual setting and get some interaction started is visiting one of the IC radio shows / parties. In SWL there are stations where a DJ will broadcast music and do IC voice breaks that you can tune in to with your browser.

Usually there also is an in-game party / meetup when a show is live. They happen at different zones and you should check the station’s announcement to find out where and when shows are happening. Remember to pay attention to timezones! An event taking place at 3pm GMT is at 8pm US Eastern, for example.

Etiquette: It is considered bad behaviour to do very disruptive things during a show. Sure, there is place for conflict during them, but keep it civil. Most DJs are happy to have you do more extreme things and bring a plot to the show, but get in touch with them first. Preparing those shows takes a lot of effort and they should have a chance to prepare for what you have planned.

Happy Tentacle Radio

Happy Tentacle Radio is the newest of the stations but even it has a few years of history in SWL. The link above send you directly to their streaming site, if you want to know when a show will be on, check their twitter.

Secret World RP

Secret World RP is the oldest site and was known as TSW-RP before the relaunch of the game. They have a forum and an event calendar. Their forum as a rich source of discussions and guides. Some might be related to TSW, but still are relevant.

They also have a discord server where you can chat and talk about the game & RP.

SWLRP

SWLRP was founded when the relaunch of the game was announced to offer a fresh start and a sole focus on the “new” game. They offer a forum for discussions, event calendar and a wiki where you can post detailed profiles of your characters, NPCs, and cabals.

The Lower World

While the other two are mostly focused on community building, the Lower World has its focus more on forum roleplay. That does not mean there is no community there though but the software has tools available for forum RP that are a lot more advanced than in the other two.

Twitter Roleplay

Surprisingly, SWL has a large community of roleplayers that use Twitter to enhance their roleplay in the Secret World.

It all started with the Twitter Experiment where Funcom put out official NPCs on Twitter to interact with each other (and sometimes with the community). While the activity has toned down a lot, the community is still quite vibrant.

Players set up Twitter accounts for their characters and use them to post things about their characters. What they eat, cat pictures, where they go, what they struggle with and what they are happy about. Normal social media stuff, just with the twist of the Secret World.

Lists of RP Twitter Accounts

Other means

You can also search for the hashtag #SWLRP and have a look at the profiles Twitter recommends you to follow. Most players mention in they biography on Twitter that it is an RP account.

What to post

Like mentioned above, typical social media stuff is an easy starter. Or just follow a few SWL placer characters and respond to a good morning or hello post.

How much is posted about the secret world and what the character is doing in it, is your decision. Some players don’t post about these things at all and keep them secret, while other livetweet from missions. None of these are doing it wrong, just different styles.